Friday, November 30, 2012

Last night when I came back from office, I saw the email from www.99tests.com about a one day contest on Android mobile. I joined the contest and observed that the max limit of bugs per tester was 15 instead of 25 (for 3 day contests). For every duplicate bug one logs, there is a -1 point. So, one has to be careful before logging bugs. And when I joined the contest, there were already 50+ bugs logged. I like to spend the initial few minutes of any contest, trying to understand the purpose of the application, the focus areas by the other testers and the validation strategy by the contest owner.

I wanted to go through every bug logged and at the same time understand the application quickly. I started with few bugs and then an idea struck me. Why not map the bugs and categorize the features too as parent nodes?

This is what I got after 25 mins:

Mindmap of Bugs

This way, I went through every bug and still made a high level model of the entire application.

I liked it and after three hours of testing, I got the 7th position with 100% valid bugs. I logged 6 bugs.

Maybe, there is a better approach but I liked the approach of mapping out the bugs before testing. What do you think? Do you have a better way?

Friday, November 23, 2012

One of the good things about working in a cool company like www.maas360.com is that the management cares about learning opportunity for its employees. It understands that if the company has to be at the top, the employees have to work on their skills. One of the easy ways is to provide access to resources which will help the employees - books, conferences, contests, tutorials, memberships and so on. This is very easy to do but very few companies encourage such learning opportunity.

As soon as I got to know about the book https://leanpub.com/testmobileapps by Jonathan Kohl, I wanted to read it. The request was approved and I got a chance to read the book on the same day.

As seen on the site, the book covers a wide range of topics necessary to know about mobile app testing.

What did I learn from this book:
Reading the book was a very good experience. Every page had something new. I liked the initial chapters a lot compared to the strategy, planning chapters. I wanted to read this book on my mobile phone - landscape mode using QuickOffice Reader. This experience helped me find some bugs in QuickOffice Reader application and I could also experience using a mobile app.

Examples of different types of bugs
I like the books where the authors don't just mention what to do but also highlight their experience when they followed their own advice. Jonathan Kohl does a great job in highlighting his experiences in testing different types of mobile apps and what kid of bugs he found. Some of his bug stories are like the detective puzzles and teach you a lot.

What's inside a mobile and how it can affect tests
To be honest, I knew very little about the mobile hardware before starting this book compared to now when I am writing this blog post. You regularly move your mobile but are you aware of which sensors are affected? Do you have any idea of how your test results are indirectly and to some extent, directly affected by the mobile hardware? This book has a dedicated chapter and is a good starter for someone like me.

Different Tours
Though there are many tours mentioned in this book, I like the Gesture tour. Pinch/Tap/Flick/Swipe/Press - Which gesture do you like? I tried few of the gestures and found bugs specific to them. There are many different types of tours mentioned in this book. Ok, he not only mentions them but also explains as to how to conduct each tour.

Testing Mnemonics for Mobiles
Jonathan Kohl - creator of I SLICED UP FUN mnemonic also explains about few other mnemonics in this book. As a tester, its good to know such mnemonics so that you can apply them as and when required instead of thinking of new tests every time.

Dealing with Intermittent bugs
This topic is not new to many testers. James Bach talks about such bugs here - www.satisfice.com/blog/archives/34 BBST course - Bug Advocacy section too highlights tips to tackle such bugs. www.testingeducation.org/BBST Jonathan Kohl talks about intermittent bugs found during testing mobile apps. Small distractions, movements, network changes, orientation differences - how can they affect the bugs - the topic covers them all.

The book is worth the cost. Hope Jonathan writes more such books and continue to help the testing community. Thanks Jonathan Kohl.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Give "time", some time. When your teacher gave you time, you did not complain. Now that you have become the teacher, you forgot that the student needs time?

Apply this to any practice we start. Just because few teams got to a great start, it doesn't mean that other teams should match the standard. Not everything can be measured objectively. And if one tries to measure, I have enough examples where the behavior can be tuned to meet the metric.

If you feel that this post doesn't make any sense and is very disconnected as a whole, its ok. I wanted to test blogger app.

Maybe, I should google for "learning mechanisms" or read on wikipedia.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

I conducted a one day workshop on Nov 27th at Microsoft India Development Center (MSIDC), Hyderabad. Close to twenty five testers attended the workshop.Highlights:

Microsoft campus

I heard from one of the testers that he wanted to attend this workshop as he would get a chance to step into Microsoft campus. The conference room and the arrangements were almost perfect. Right from seating arrangements to projector, whiteboard, the two HUGE screens, lunch to the general ambience of the entire campus.

When I came in with Raghavendra, I had the printout with list of attendees. I never thought that my name was to be included in the list as well. The security did not allow me inside as my name was not present on the attendees' list. Even though I told them that I am the speaker, they made sure that only when Raj Kamal - who works at Microsoft - came & explained the situation, they let me in. I am not blaming the security. They did the perfect job according to what is expected of them. I wanted to highlight the funny experience and the connection with software testing where you can have many aspects covered and yet leave the most important one untested.

Presentation on Microsoft Test Manager (MTM) tool

The first one hour, we had a presentation on how one of the Microsoft teams uses Microsoft Test Manager (MTM) tool and how it can be used for Exploratory Testing. I liked how the tool attached all the logs to the bug report. I did not like the concept of creating a test case for a bug. And if your company can buy the license, go ahead and use it. If you think its costly, there is Rapid Reporter, free screen recording software, Texter, www.supportdetails.com, run > dxdiag to help your purpose.

As I have never used the tool, I cannot comment much about the tool.

First mindmaps

Many had heard about mindmaps but very few had used it for software testing. Some of them were totally new to mindmaps and I could feel the joy and satisfaction when they told - "Today, I created my first mindmap". This is exactly the moment I cherish for a long time. Many people have helped me get started on many things. I am doing my bit to get few more people get started. How they fare after they start is totally in their hands.

Feedback for me

I like when people tell me where I can improve. I got feedback on the structure of the workshop, the duration of the workshop. I accept them and have already started working on them. I will try my best to bring in some more structure to the latter half of the workshop.

Check-out comments

Everyone had good things to say about the workshop. This is exactly the reason why I give them a blank notebook so that they can give their feedback in private. At the end of the workshop, each of the testers told me how they felt that their time was not wasted even though it was a saturday. One of them missed a movie and still did not feel bad :)Thanks to the Hyderabad testers. My only suggestion is that if you are not sure of attending, don't block seats and prevents others from taking part.If you want me to conduct a hands-on workshop in your city, email me [ajay184f@gmail.com]Till next time, Thank you.